Predicting Public Support for Migrant Regularization in Morocco

Although migrant regularization – more commonly known as amnesty – varies considerably by country, it typically allows displaced persons to acquire legal residency permits and work visas. Frequently, the state will also permit displaced persons to apply for asylum, assessing whether they can attain refugee status. Such campaigns encourage displaced persons, who often have entered a country illegally and clandestinely, to come out of the shadows and declare their presence to governmental authorities without arrest, detention, or expulsion. Regularization is advantageous for displaced persons because it allows them to reside within their host country peacefully, without fearing imprisonment or refoulement, while they search for family members, medical care, lodging, and financial resources.

In 2014 and 2017, Morocco launched two regularization campaigns that together benefited around 40,000 displaced persons.Footnote ²¹ The campaigns were well known among ordinary Moroccans, and the local media covered them extensively.Footnote ²² Additionally, Morocco's King Mohammed VI made three well-publicized public speeches in 2013,Footnote ²³ 2014,Footnote ²⁴ and 2016Footnote ²⁵ announcing his country's regularization campaigns and its “solidarity-based” policy for dealing with migrants.Footnote ²⁶ The 2014 campaign regularized predominantly Arab and sub-Saharan African displaced persons, mostly Senegalese (25 percent), Syrians (20 percent), and Nigerians (9 percent).Footnote ²⁷ Morocco established local offices operating under the auspices of the Ministry in Charge of Moroccans Abroad and Migration Affairs to receive regularization requests. The ministry approved, initially, 65 percent of regularization applications.Footnote ²⁸ After appeals were processed, the approval rate increased to 92 percent.Footnote ²⁹ The 2017 regularization campaign approved 82 percent of applications.Footnote ³⁰ Although the nationalities of applicants approved have not yet been announced, the majority of 2017 requests came from sub-Saharan African displaced persons, notably Senegalese (24 percent), Ivoirians (18 percent), Guineans (6 percent), and Cameroonians (6 percent). A smaller number of applications came from Syrians (7 percent).Footnote ³¹

During both the 2014 and 2017 campaigns, each migrant undergoing regularization gained a one-year residency card and a work permit eligible for renewal. In processing applications, Morocco prioritized the following groups of migrants: women and their children, unaccompanied minors, migrants possessing a job with a work contract, migrants who had been married to Moroccans for two years or more, children of mixed Moroccan-foreign married couples, well-educated migrants, and chronically ill migrants undergoing care in Morocco.Footnote ³² An additional category included displaced persons who had lived continuously in Morocco for five years or longer. Indeed, most regularization applicants – about 64 percent – met this criterion.Footnote ³³ Ultimately, those not approved for regularization in 2014 frequently could not provide required legal documents (like a valid work or marriage contract) to the authorities.Footnote ³⁴ The 2017 campaign loosened requirements compared to the 2014 campaign in that it regularized displaced persons actively working without a valid work contact.Footnote ³⁵ Crucially, Morocco's regularization campaign furnished displaced persons with information about education and healthcare services and also about the asylum system to evaluate whether they could become refugees (particularly helpful for Syrians and Congolese).Footnote ³⁶

Next, drawing on extant studies of citizen attitudes toward migrants and refugees, this analysis presents three theories explaining variations in citizen support for, or opposition to, regularization campaigns. Since gauging public attitudes toward displaced persons is a relatively new research area for scholars of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), these theories come from research completed in Western European countries, where the academic literature is well established. Studies from Western Europe indicate that economic, cultural, and security concerns tend to shape citizens’ attitudes toward migrants. Thus there are three distinct, though not mutually exclusive, theories to be tested in our Morocco-based survey.

Theory One argues that native citizens’ economic concerns likely shape their attitudes toward regularizing migrants. It has been found that, because migrants typically have lower skill levels than native citizens,Footnote ³⁷ and because they often accept lower wages than native citizens,Footnote ³⁸ unskilled native citizens’ wages decline after migrant influxes. Consequently, low-skilled native citizens often oppose migrants.Footnote ³⁹ Citizens’ concerns about fiscal burdens also shape their attitudes toward migrants. Although the net fiscal effect of migration is not conclusive,Footnote ⁴⁰ a substantial portion of citizens often believe that migrants place fiscal burdens on society by trying to access welfare benefits and services.Footnote ⁴¹ Finally, citizens’ assessment of the overall economic impact of migrants, such as their effect on the economy's size and growth,Footnote ⁴² can influence their preferences on migration. Extending this logic, Theory One hypothesizes that native citizens who view migrants as causing negative economic consequences will be more likely than other citizens to oppose regularization campaigns.

Theory Two emphasizes culture. Cultural tensions related to migration have intensified in many migrant-receiving countries of Western Europe in recent decades, following, first, the influxes of refugees from Southeastern Europe in the 1990s and, thereafter, new refugees from Muslim-majority countries in the 2000s.Footnote ⁴³ Thus, multiculturalism (i.e., the coexistence of multiple cultures in a given society) has emerged as a contentious issue. Extant studies show that, in particular, certain characteristics of native citizens (gender, age, and political ideology) are associated with cultural bias against migrants. Specifically, older male citizens with right-wing affiliations tend to express cultural prejudice against migrants more often than do citizens with different attributes.Footnote ⁴⁴ This cultural prejudice is associated with the historical connection these characteristics have had with nationalistic attitudes more generally. Such cultural prejudice attenuates with citizens’ higher education levels, however.Footnote ⁴⁵ In short, native citizens more threatened by cultural tensions with migrants would be more likely to oppose regularization campaigns.

Theory Three focuses on security. Native citizens who express concerns that migrants may cause insecurity, such as terrorism or crime, will be more likely than other citizens to oppose regularization. While an increase in the number of migrants does not correlate with greater crime or terrorism, many native citizens misperceive that migrants exacerbate both problemsFootnote ⁴⁶ because they see migrants as either suffering unfavorable economic circumstances (i.e., possessing lower levels of education, skills, and income) or having low social integration (i.e., lacking family, social, and community networks).Footnote ⁴⁷ Some research indicates the opposite: migrants, in fact, often have tight familial and religious networks that deter criminality. Moreover, some studies have found that the rigor of the migration process itself seems to successfully screen out individuals likely to commit crimes.Footnote ⁴⁸ Despite the empirical inaccuracy linking an increase in the number of migrants with higher crime rates, many surveys nonetheless find that native citizens mistakenly hold these views.Footnote ⁴⁹

Original Survey and Empirical Analysis

Conducted in September 2017, our 1,500-respondent survey was statistically representative for the Casablanca-Settat region, Morocco's most populous and economically important region. During the regularization campaign, this region received the second-largest number of applications, indicating that it is a geographic area in which many migrants reside. The survey was administered house-to-house in Arabic, and the response rate was over 94 percent. The authors completed the survey in collaboration with a professional survey organization led by an academic and considered Morocco's most reputable survey firm. The organization contracted for this project acts as the local partner for both the Arab Barometer (previous three waves) and the Afrobarometer (previous four waves), which are the two major international survey initiatives conducting polling research in Morocco.

Random selection methods were used in all stages of sampling (for a 3 percent plus/minus margin of error). Province acted as the sampling stratum, and lowest-level urban and rural administrative districts (or “communes”) were selected randomly. Housing blocks within the communes were also selected randomly, and houses were selected randomly using the random walk method. The Kish table method was used to randomly select survey participants within each home. This multistage, randomized sample of Morocco's Casablanca-Settat region was obtained through a sampling frame provided by the National Institute of Statistics and generally followed the methodology of Benstead's previous Morocco-based surveys.Footnote ⁵⁰ The full survey was launched after a 100-respondent pilot survey to test question understandability in Arabic. Additionally, the authors conducted randomly selected and unannounced observations of enumerators administering the survey in the field to supervise data collection. These unannounced observations of survey enumerators occurred in the following locations, both urban and rural, in the Casablanca-Settat region: Casablanca (Moulay Rachid, Ain Seba‘a, Sidi Moumen, and Anfa neighborhoods), Mohammedia, Mediouna, Sidi Bennour (twice), and Ain Harrouda. In total, the authors directly observed 9 of the 10 enumerators during data collection.

The survey was designed to determine which economic, cultural, and security variables seemed to raise or lower native citizens’ support for regularization.Footnote ⁵¹ In the main dependent variable question, the survey asked citizens how much they supported Morocco's regularization campaign (strongly agree, agree, neither agree nor disagree, disagree, or strongly disagree).Footnote ⁵² Through an ordered logistic model, the most robust correlates with either higher or lower levels of support were identified. The independent variable questions used herein were not randomized because this study focuses on elucidating more descriptive, correlative relationships as in traditional public opinion research. This approach aligns with practices used in the Arab Barometer and Afrobarometer public opinion initiatives, which also do not use randomized independent variable question items on their Morocco-based surveys. However because the placement of both the independent and dependent variables questions was uniform in all questionnaires, any potential ordering effects would be held constant and uniform among all respondents.

First, three economic questions captured native citizens’ perceptions about the possible negative consequences of migrant labor on their jobs, livelihoods, and the macroeconomy. Second, a question tracked whether citizens believed migrants undermine Moroccan culture to gauge perceptions of cultural threats or tensions. Two additional questions (incorporated as interaction terms) about ideology (preference for pan-Arab or pan-African ideologies) were included to assess whether native citizens holding such beliefs might be less susceptible to migrants’ potential cultural threats. That is, Moroccans who ascribe to either pan-Arab or pan-African ideologies might be less likely to feel cultural tensions with groups of displaced persons that were predominantly Arab or sub-Saharan African. An additional question tracked respondents’ levels of religiosity, as some more religious native citizens might be more susceptible to cultural threats, as some displaced persons (notably sub-Saharan Africans) are non-Muslims. Third, two questions measured to what degree native citizens believed that migrants increase crime or terrorism. Citizen views do not necessarily cohere with empirical reality; misperceptions might therefore depress support for regularization.

Figure 1 presents results on the correlates of either greater or lower levels of support from native citizens for Morocco's regularization campaign. The survey's findings indicate that all three theories – economic, cultural, and security factors – seem to affect support for regularization.Footnote ⁵³ Citizens who think that migrants worsen Morocco's national economy, dilute its culture, and undermine its internal security are more likely to oppose regularization.Footnote ⁵⁴ Though citizens with strong pan-Africanist ideologies are more likely to support the regularization program, their belief in either pan-Arab or pan-Africanist ideologies does not seem to dampen their likelihood of perceiving migrants as cultural threats (models 2 and 3). The predicted probabilities in Figure 1 highlight the correlation between negative perceptions of migrants’ effects on Morocco and opposition to regularization. As citizens’ responses to the survey questions moved from “disagree strongly” to “agree strongly,” their probability of supporting regularization dropped from 0.53~0.54 to 0.46~0.48; likewise, their probability of opposing regularization increased from 0.16~0.18 to 0.24~0.26.Footnote ⁵⁵

Figure 1:

Correlates of support for the regularization program.

Note: Positive coefficients denote higher support for migrant regularization; negative ones denote opposition. Standard errors in parentheses. *** p < 0.01, ** p < 0.05, * p < 0.1

Specific demographic attributes of native citizens predicted higher support for Morocco's regularization campaign. First, women expressed more support. This finding coheres with studies from Europe, which suggest that the historical connection between manhood and nationalism drives men to oppose migrants.Footnote ⁵⁶ Second, richer citizens voiced more support for regularization, likely because they are less vulnerable to labor competition with migrants who work predominantly in lower-skilled and lower-income jobs.Footnote ⁵⁷ Finally, native citizens self-identifying as black Moroccans (i.e., of historic sub-Saharan African roots) supported regularization more than Moroccans of other ethnicities. This result likely stems from the fact that black Moroccans might hold more empathy for sub-Saharan African migrants, who constitute the majority of displaced persons. Moreover, if the findings herein parallel those discovered in the European context, it may be that black Moroccans view sub-Saharan migrants as potential political allies.Footnote ⁵⁸

Figure 2:

Predicted probabilities of the attitudes toward the regularization program.

Note: Circles indicate predicted probabilities and lines at their 95 percent confidence interval. The probabilities are calculated with the result of Figure 1’s model. “Agree with regularization” indicates the response of “Agree” to the question on regularization program (=4). “Disagree with regularization” indicates the response of “Disagree” to the question (=2). All the other variables are fixed at their mean level when predicted probabilities are calculated. Thorough predicted probabilities for all the categories of the dependent variable are presented in the Appendix.

Conclusions, Limitations, and Future Research

Our key finding in this article was that a majority of native citizens – over 59 percent – supported Morocco's recent regularization campaign. However, different economic, cultural, and security variables correlated with either greater or lesser support. Similar to studies from Western Europe, this article discovered that native citizens concerned about clandestine migrants’ negative effects on the economy, culture, and internal security reported stronger opposition to regularization. Further, richer, female, and black native citizens supported regularization more strongly.

But this article faces constraints, underscoring the necessity for future studies. Foremost among these constraints is that the data came from one region within one North African state that has implemented regularization. Thus, it is difficult to know whether the attitudinal trends discovered herein extend to all of Morocco, or to neighboring North African states, like Algeria and Tunisia, that have also considered regularization policies. Yet after recognizing this limitation, this article still has value by providing the first-ever survey of public support for regularization campaigns for clandestine migrants in North Africa. It provides a starting point for future studies, which would likely use nationally representative public opinion polls.

Another question left unanswered relates to the underlying rationale for migrant regularization, more generally. It remains unclear why Morocco's regime has successfully executed regularization campaigns while many of its North African neighbors have not. Morocco may have pursued this policy to signal higher compassion for sub-Saharan African migrants, who throughout the 2000s and 2010s suffered harsh treatment from its police.Footnote ⁵⁹ The regime may want to enhance its image first among European states, which have previously criticized its mishandling of migrants, and second among governments of sub-Saharan African countries, where Morocco has expanded its economic investment, religious outreach, and political influence since the early 2010s.Footnote ⁶⁰ Only future research can help explore these emerging topics of inquiry.